@uwalummom sorry, just saw your post this morning. Yes, a little concerned about that but I think as @Madison85 and @wis2020 have pointed out, their are options and the chances of getting in are decent if you apply yourself. I guess my thought is that if he applies (I think you get two chances to apply) and does not get in, then either he might need to transfer to another school or possibly re-think his major.
Also, while it seems like someone who is at the bottom end of the general school admissions stats would not likely get one of the limited direct admits into the Business School as a freshman, our visit to the school and tour of the business school back in October gave us a little hope in regards to this. The way they explained it is once you receive general admission into UW you will get an invite to apply for direct admission into the Business School (as long as you indicated on your app that you were interested in a business degree). I think they stated that there were 2 essays on the app and at that point they are not really looking that closely at your high school grades because they figure if they were good enough to get into UW then they are good enough for the business school. What they are mainly looking for is showing an aptitude for business (HS business classes taken, EC’s, passion for business demonstrated in essay, etc). My son has taken just about every business course available at his High School, has an internship as an accounting assistant this school year, and has gone to state two years in a row for FBLA. So, we are hoping all of that would factor into the decision of getting admitted into the business school. Assuming he get’s into UW!
@BrewCrew82 Thank you for your follow-up, and also thanks for sharing the information you received during the tour. It sounds like your son has an awesome start to his business career!!
@celesteroberts, sorry I did not get back to you sooner. First of all, I think I got the “up to 35.4%” wrong, not sure how I got that now, it’s actually higher. But here is what I meant: it’s based on the numbers 5731 accepted but only 3700 attending. That means 2031 students who where accepted but did not attend. We don’t know how many of those choosing not to attend where initial offers vs. initially postponed, that’s where the “up to” comes from. But the largest possible % of initial offers that did not accept (thus opening slots up to postponed) is if all 2031 choosing not to attend were initial offers & none postponed students (i.e. every postponed student made an offer accepts). If they extend offers to 3700 and 2031 don’t intend, that is actual 2031/3700 = 55% of 3700 slots still open for filling later. But as I said that is the theoretical maximum (for 2014), almost certainly some of those declines came from postponed students who’d already committed elsewhere.
The most interesting stat to me in that article was that there “only” 30,463 applications in 2014 (compare that to 48,000 at U of M Twin Cities this year, and 45,000 last year), and more to the point only 8,000 in-state. As the article states, that meant 71% (over 2/3) in state students that applied two years ago were eventually admitted. This was a surprise to me. Note however it is likely to be less this year, Chancellor blank got approval from the Board of Regents last summer to raise the OOS cap from 27.5% to around 30% of total student body, as part of the plan the mitigate budget cuts (this means there are less in state students to subsidize).
On another note, I’ve heard a rumour that UW-Madison was considering moving to the common application. I think I see why if application totals are that low compared to Minnesota.
@madmanmark I’m not sure that Minnesota takes common app either. My son applied there and did not see that as an option for submitting his app (although he used the “Golden Gopher” app that was sent to him and did not require an essay, so never really looked into the common app option).
We were actually talking about the Minnesota vs. Wisconsin application numbers in our house the other day. Of the applicants that Minnesota accepts only about 27% end up going to Minnesota. This is pretty low compared to WI (and many other schools). Our thought is that there are a lot more WI students that apply for both WI and MN with MN being the “back-up” option vs. MN students that apply for both schools (and WI being the back-up option for them).
The essay in the UW app is pretty minimal, but still is an essay. That could put some students off, especially those casting a wide net, and with UW not being on common app means you really have to fill out a separate application that takes more than a few minutes. UMN app is SO easy and they offer fee waiver to many OOS high-achieving applicants.
In Madison area at least, high school students are generally well-aware of what is needed to fall into categories of likely admit/dice roll/reject at UW as they hear stories from families with older students and high schools work to make sure kids know the standards. I know of many families who didn’t feel it was worth the time and money to apply when they were fairly certain of denial. In both states there has long been the feeling that UMN is an ‘easier’ school, because they did used to have much lower ACT/GPA. In recent years they have worked hard to enroll stronger students and pulled even with UW on these measures, both at 26-31 mid-50 ACT,for both about 50% freshmen were in top 10% of HS class(UW slightly higher). But the public perception of this shift has not caught up yet, so a lot more students feel qualified to apply to UMN than to UW, at least around where we live.
Another factor is scholarships. UW has less $ for scholarships. You can see this in the CDS. Even adjusting for UMN’s slighter larger student body, UMN has 30% more institutional merit scholarship $. And the way in which they are awarded is key in drawing applicants. UMN has some large renewable freshmen merit awards which are guaranteed or highly likely for high achieving kids and which they organize linearly on one page and advertise prominently on their website. One is $11,000-12,00/year for NMF, and another is an OOS tuition waiver( OOS NMFs get both.) This, combined with the painless app, makes UMN an easy financial back-up school for high achieving students who prefer northern environs in cities.
UW has nothing comparable. Their larger scholarships are mostly departmental and competitive or diversity. There is an automatic $7500 freshman only in-state NMF award, but it is not advertised. When you hunt through their scholarships, often the $ are not listed so you can’t even tell if the awards are substantial or minor unless you start phoning and e-mailing.
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Not saying one way of running things is superior to another, just different. But it might explain some of the difference in applications.
@celesteroberts all of those numbers help explain the added number of applications at MN. I guess I was trying to theorize as to why so many accepted students at MN decline to go there (close to 75%).
Guessing that the average applicant to UMN has many more apps out there than the average UW applicant, but just a guess. If you look at the applicant profile for the various UMN colleges, you see that the stats are quite high, much higher than for students attending. A lot of kids use it as an easy admissions/financial safety. They have a Presidential Scholarship that mostly goes to top in-state applicants. I’ll bet they award many more of those than they can get to attend.
Maybe some OOS students apply and only later worry about the particularly harsh winters in MN? Though Madison is pretty cold, Minneapolis is colder, says my H who spent some years at both universities.
Madison somehow has this reputation as a very student friendly college town, top fun place. Minneapolis is awesome with lots to do, and the UMN-TC campus is great, but the neighborhoods that directly surround the campus don’t quite compare to Madison in atmosphere. That might make a difference. Dinkytown is cool, but it isn’t quite State St.
Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE Minneapolis and tried hard to persuade S to attend, almost thought he would for awhile. Just trying to look at it from some other perspectives.
@BrewCrew82, I wasn’t aware of that 27% stat for U of M, interesting. Where did you learn that? This implies that for the 5700 student freshman class this fall, they will have accepted over 21,000 students to fill it, or almost half their 48,000 applicants. I wonder if they also have as stark an acceptance threshold difference between OOS and IS as Madison does. I just don’t know enough about Minnesota, not having any strong connections to it.
p.s. no they don’t have the common app either, didn’t mean to imply they did. But like celesteroberts said, they have no essays, while UW Madison has two. SO Madison admissions may have more “incentive” to make the move to it (make the application process easier) than U of M.
This is interesting. You can see how many are enrolled from different locations, though can’t see how many applied/accepted. Always so much easier to find enrollment data than admissions data. Plenty of undergrads from China, though nothing like Michigan State.
http://www.oir.umn.edu/student/enrollment_map/report
They have all sorts of fun charts on their OIR site.
Here is a good news article. Still doesn’t have acceptance rate broken down by location:
http://www.twincities.com/2015/05/19/tougher-umn-admissions-draw-more-elite-more-diverse-students/
You can always see numbers applying/accepted/enrolled on the CDS as well.
The number of students attending from WI has been dropping the past few years. Down almost 20% from 2011. I wonder how much of that is due to UMN changing the terms of reciprocity so that these days WI kids pay the higher UMN tuiton to attend when they used to pay the UW tuition while at UMN.
http://www.oir.umn.edu/student/enrollment/term/1159/trend/10829
This article has the acceptance rate for internationals. There may be typos with date-switching, but it doesn’t affect those numbers.
http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2015/12/07/int%E2%80%99l-student-numbers-reach-lull
Some of the decrease could be related to declining population.
20% down in four years- I’d bet on costs more than a huge decline in 18 year olds.